Notebook: Replacing Glauber And More

With Gláuber now lost for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee,
the Crew must again replace one of its key starters.

Fellow center back Chad Marshall has missed the last four games with a hamstring injury,
allowing us to see some of the players who will now be in the mix for a permanent starting
position. Today, head coach Robert Warzycha listed Eric Gehrig, Kevan George and Josh Williams as
candidates to pair inside with Marshall.

Warzycha has not confirmed that Marshall and Williams will be in Saturday’s starting lineup
against Montreal, but he has strongly hinted that the team needs them to be. My guess is that
Williams starts at right back and Marshall pairs inside with Gehrig, who to me has outperformed
George as a center back.

Much of the Crew’s defense has been predicated on forcing opponents to the wings with the belief
that Marshall and Gláuber would win most crosses with their stature. That approach did not change
when Marshall was out with injury and Gláuber with a one-game suspension, but it might be worth
revisiting now that one of the two will be out for the remainder of the season.

Warzycha said Marshall and Gláuber would just now be settling into a groove if they had been
playing together all season.

“They didn’t play together too many games and obviously it’s a process,” he said. “They have to
gel and know tendencies and everything else about how they read the game. It would probably take
10-15 games and then after that they would probably have a very good understanding. In the
beginning we were giving up one goal a game so it wasn’t bad. We had that physical presence in the
box and were winning balls. Obviously Chad’s injury and now with Gláuber’s injury we’ve lost that a
little bit and we’re putting some guys in a tough spot. Kevan, against New York that was his first
time playing center back and Eric has more experience. He’s doing as well as he can.”

With a guaranteed 2013 compensation of $263,333.33, Gláuber is the third-highest paid player on
the Crew roster.

“You’re going to have injuries in a season and that’s why we have more than 11 players on the
roster,” defender Tyson Wahl said. “Guys are going to have to step up and play well and fill in his
role. Gehrig has played well at center back, so I think he’s proven that he can definitely fill in.
I think Kevan has surprised a lot of people too by being pretty solid back there. I think our back
line, we’ve been missing Josh and Chad but I think we’ve done a decent job except for the game in
Philly. We have to limit errors on big, game-changing plays.”

The Crew’s opening-game starters have missed a combined 30 games so far this season and only
three – Federico Higuain, Andy Gruenebaum and Dominic Oduro – have started every game this
year.

Also, rookie Chad Barson is likely out against Montreal after picking up an infection Wednesday
night in Chicago. He had been Williams' replacement in the lineup.

Regrets?Warzycha surely has a few, but then again going with key players in Open Cup games are not a
few to mention.

Before Gláuber, Eddie Gaven suffered a torn ACL in his left knee in the team’s Open Cup win
against Dayton at the end of May. Given the benefit of hindsight, does Warzycha regret playing such
important players in the tournament?

“I don’t regret because everybody wants to play,” he said. “All the players want to play. I have
to pull them back, whether it’s for the last game against the Dutch Lions or this one against
Chicago. Some players weren’t happy they weren’t playing because they want to play. I’m always
thinking about the next game. That’s what I told (Gláuber) before the game, (I was playing him)
because of the way he positions himself, the way he’s playing, the way he covers ground – he’s
always thinking and he’s very smart on the field.”

TravelsAfter the Crew’s U.S. Open Cup game with Chicago was postponed one day on account of severe
weather, a number of logistic problems popped up that resulted in the Crew arriving home at 2:30
a.m. on Friday via bus.

What happened? It started with the team’s initial plan to rest at the hotel after the 1 p.m.
Eastern start before heading to the airport for a 9:50 p.m. flight home. After the loss to the
Fire, the Crew learned around 5 p.m. that its flight home had been delayed two hours because the
plane that would be bringing everyone to Columbus had not yet left Kansas City.

“We couldn’t fly back home until 11:50, which was questionable about whether that flight was
going to leave Chicago,” Warzycha said. “If that flight would not leave, we would be stuck in
Chicago probably until (Friday afternoon) and have to take a bus anyway in the morning. There were
no flights in the morning from Chicago to Columbus because of the weather. Eventually we’d have to
take the bus back home anyway.”

So it was that when the players boarded the bus thinking they were headed to the airport, they
were informed that the plans had changed.

After losing a key player to a serious injury, being eliminated from the Open Cup and facing a
date with Eastern Conference leader Montreal in two days, Wahl said there was a feeling of “what
else could go wrong?” among the players.

“Yeah, I think so, with the delay, the loss, the major injury, the travel back,” he said. “At
the end of it you just have to laugh it off and expect that the trip didn’t go as planned and may
continue to go that way.

“It was a lengthy evening, but it all worked out. It wasn’t terrible.”

TradeThe Crew today traded one of its 2013 international roster spots to FC Dallas for a
fourth-round pick in the 2014 supplemental draft.

The move means the Crew has two available international roster spots remaining. The five
currently under contract are Jairo Arrieta, Gláuber, Matias Sanchez, Bernardo Anor and Higuain.

Only three fourth-round supplemental draft picks are still on MLS rosters, including the Crew’s
Shawn Sloan. The others are Leo Fernandes (Philadelphia) and Peter McGlynn (San Jose).

Technical director Brian Bliss has said throughout the season that the Crew is unlikely to make
any roster moves this season, and trading away an international spot seems in line with those
comments. The fact that the deal was made with the other team owned by Hunt Sports Group should not
pass unnoticed, either.